About Obfuscator-LLVM, Dual-Use Tools and Academic Ethics

All it's going to do is increase the arms race in terms of unobfuscating code. This happened with Flash quite a few years back. The war has a null sum. I don't think there's any stake to the claim that an obfuscater could be a net gain.

So, maybe providing code to a group called "the evad3rs" was a mistake. But I think the mistake was minimal. They would have had the code a week later anyway, and I don't think that's an argument against creating these types of tools. Even if we argue that academics shouldn't create tools like obfuscaters and such, that just means someone else will write them... and we won't have access to the source then.

Reverse engineering software and jailbreaking was done for freedom, the argument being there should not be any restrictions on the software/hardware we buy. Ironically we have come to a point where the jailbreaking code comes obfuscated. The whole community laps it up purely for their technical prowess rather than the political statement. Do the jailbreakers have a claim to the moral high ground any more?

So DRM is considered ethical, as opposed to malware?<p>That&#x27;s a low ethical standard to adhere to.

I don&#x27;t think I have ever heard RMS talk about this issue.